Sunday, July 25, 2010

The point, or one of the main points anyway, is that this Top Secret world has expanded so quickly, with so little control, that nobody knows its costs and boundaries; nobody can keep up with all the information going in and coming out. That's the irony: The expansion took place primarily to improve the intelligence networks, to make it easier for all the various intelligence agencies to integrate their efforts, and thus to "connect the dots," so that patterns can be discerned in random data and terrorist plots can be detected and stopped in time.

However, the result has proved so crushingly complex that, in many ways, the problem has intensified. Or, as retired Lt. Gen. John R. Vines—who was recently assigned to track the most secretive intelligence programs in the Defense Department alone—told the Post reporters, no entity anywhere has "the authority, responsibility or a process in place to coordinate all these interagency and commercial activities." As a result, he said, "we can't effectively assess whether it is making us more safe."